Tag Archives: bad math

It’s no secret that Japan’s economy has been in the slow lane for a long spell — GDP has grown over the last decade at an average annual rate of only 0.6%.

Well, according to a Japanese think tank, they better get there たわごと together.

The 21st Century Public Policy Institute is predicting that South Korea will pass Japan in gross domestic product per capita around 2030 and that Japan could even be dropped from the category of “developed countries” around that time.

The report blames the coming fall on low Japanese birth rates. The institute assumes the population will drop to 116.6 million in 2030 from 128.1 million in 2010.

That is apparently the Japanese point of Apocalypse…

“A declining population and the world’s fastest aging society will combine to have significant effects on the economy,” the report says. “Unless something is done, we are afraid Japan will fall out of the league of advanced nations and again become a tiny country in the Far East.”

Read the rest here, if you want, but one thing that comes off as odd: South Korea too has about the same low birth rates and aging population, but the group picks them to pass Japan by 2030 in GDP per capita. OK, I could see that with Korea’s economy growing at about about 3-4%. Why not?

The weird part is that Korea is currently ranked 24th in GDP per capita and Japan is ranked 20th. The report predicts that Korea will rise to 15th and Japan will sink to 21st –which is only a one spot drop.

That doesn’t sound so bad, eh? Or could this simply could be a clever intellectual snub of their rival?

Following the logic here, Korea being 6 spots ahead rather than 4 spots behind at present is the same as being “a tiny country in the Far East?”